Lake Oroville (2)

Last Spring, we were bringing our son to Chico with a car full of stuff. This weekend, having put him on a plane a few days before, we were picking the stuff back up, as he starts a new life on the other side of the country. Ah the circle of life….

Have I mentioned I am a special education teacher? This past week was the first week of school and boy, it was a doozy! So besides getting our son’s things, we did absolutely nothing blog worthy. I’m wondering whether this weekend should even count. We did watch Season 3 of “Game of Thrones” though, so that was something. We cleaned up exploded beer on the floor and discovered the CO alarm is apparently also triggered by Anchor Steam. Perhaps it’s the carbon dioxide that triggers it. No, I did not collect data on whether wine all over the floor would also trigger it. But it probably saved us by catching the spill at the beginning of the trip when we were getting gas. I heard the alarm going off inside and noticed the beer coming out of the fridge. Looked like one of the caps was not on tight enough and the bottle had been stored on its side. I’ll have to not store them that way I guess. So Dory kind of smelled like a frat house until I really got serious about cleaning it all up. Since we have been watching the Cooking Network, we just decided that everything we ate had been enhanced with “essence of beer”. If you say that with a French accent and add, “I wasn’t so sure about the idea, but it really worked for me.” it helps.

We once again did not explore the lake that I assume exists at Lake Oroville State Recreation Area. We brought bikes, but forgot helmets. We brought laptops but got zero work done. We did not go hiking. We did not explore the area. We did not write down which sites would be the best ones to select if, for some reason, we were to ever come back. I didn’t even take my traditional picture of Dory in her site. What we did do was talk about our week. We processed the landmarks of our former children becoming adults. We analyzed what it is we love and hate about our jobs and what it means to be part of a community with shared history. We slept in. We had beer enhanced pain perdu for breakfast and microwave broccoli noodles for dinner. We looked at the stars and I spilled a second beer while lying in my zero gravity chair gazing at the Milky Way. We unhooked and decompressed and completely let go of a stressful week.

This may have been the best weekend ever.

Total miles: 144.3, 18.1 mpg, 3 hours 38 minutes. Very limited and sporadic cell service for both of us.